vince young

Vince Young spends nearly all of $26 million guaranteed contract (and approximately $30 million of endorsement proceeds); claims close associates took advantage of him....! Pleads for understanding because of financial illiteracy (including agreeing to a $1.9 million dollar loan at 20% interest to bide him through the NFL lockout).

Six years after entering the NFL as the third player taken in the draft, Vince Young finds himself without a team and with just a fraction of the money he received from a contract that guaranteed him $26 million.

Vince argues that he just executed signature pages, but never read the agreements or schedules/exhibits attached thereto (which actually happens all the time in the real world). Essentially, he seems to have given signing authority to his uncle and some criminal defense lawyer who used that privilege to spend down assets and amass additional liabilities under Vince Young's name.

Now that Vince is out of the NFL and the collection calls are streaming in, Vince is looking for hail mary passes that will get him out of this mess.

Does anyone have a job for Vince Young??!

[ED-BiSB: Per ZL's edit, you can't just copy and paste entire articles]

College Football 101

Welcome to the College Football 101 series. For those who are counting down the days, college football kicks off in 101 days. Every day until then, I will write about one topic per day. As the days get closer, the topics will get better and better until we get to #1 on August 29th, which is one day away from kickoff.

The series will consist of:

Top 25 Programs

Top 15 Rivalries

Top 15 Bands

Top 15 Stadiums

Top 10 Coaches

Top 10 Plays

Top 5 Heisman Trophy Winners

Top 6 Miscellaneous

In addition, I will do a very similar series starting Wednesday called Michigan Football 101. Both of these series will hopefully get all of you college football fans, specifically Michigan fans, excited for the season. So here it is!! 101 days until College Football Kickoff...

101. Boise State

(25th Program)

A quick look at Boise State:

Founded: 1932

Nickname: Broncos

Location: Boise, Idaho

School Size: 19,664

Stadium: Bronco Stadium

Conference: Mountain West (subject to change anytime soon with the realignments)

Conference Titles: 16

National Titles: 0

Overall Record: 377-145-2 (.721)

Mascot: Buster Bronco

Interesting Facts: The field, Lyle Smith Field, has blue turf.

Boise State is an interesting school. It is one of the few schools that is not in a BCS conference but is a threat. It is not a big school, but Boise State has made a name of itself since it defeated Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. Ever since Chris Petersen called a Hook-n'-Lateral to send the game to overtime and a Half Back Pass for a Touchdown followed up by a Statue of Liberty for the 2 Point Conversion to win the game-- and a proposal from Ian Johnson to his cheerleading girlfriend-- Boise State has attracted many college football fans.

Since 2006, the Broncos are 73-6 (.924). There are two people who hold almost all of the credit for that-- Chris Petersen and Kellen Moore. It just so happens to be that 2006 is the year Chris Petersen took over at head coach. Not only do they have a winning percentage of 92.4% under Petersen, but they are 4-2 in bowl games. This proves that Boise State has not only won all these games, but it can win the tough ones, too. This makes you wonder why they haven't played in the national championship game. They have had three undefeated seasons in the past five years, yet haven't played in the big game. Hopefully, the BCS can fix its problem, form whatever superconferences it needs, and give a team like this a chance to win a championship in a playoff.

Kellen Moore has the most wins as a starting quarterback in college football history. That is saying something! You think of all the great QBs-- Peyton Manning, Doug Floutie, Tim Tebow, Vince Young-- and Kellen Moore has more wins than any of them. His record at Boise State was 50-3 (.943). The lefty QB graduated this year and hopes to make the Detroit Lions this summer. Where does that leave Boise State? The Broncos have lost 14 starters-- six on offense and eight on defense. Junior Quarterback Joe Southwick is likely going to be the starter in 2012. He completed 15 passes on 19 attempts in the Spring Game and has taken over the leadership role. Boise not only lost its passing game, but senior Chandler Koch takes over for Doug Martin at Running Back. They are expected to fill the shoes of their predecessors according to Chris Petersen. They are definitely in a rebuilding year. Also, it doesn't help that they open up with Michigan State in East Lansing on a Friday night. Although many analysts are putting that game on upset alert, I don't think Boise State has a chance against the Spartans. It should be very interesting to see how Boise State does this year without its best player in program history.

Although they may be in some trouble this year, any team with a blue field has to be interesting. Personally, I find it interesting to watch them on TV because the players somewhat blend in with the field. My Dad says it hurts his eyes, but he's getting old :) but most people love it! How can you not like it? The stadium only seats 37,000 people, it's a relatively small school, and it's not a school full of much tradition. The Smurf Turf defines Boise State football. The first thing you think about when someone says "Boise State" is the blue field.

Boise State is not a well-known program simply because it has not won a single national championship. The Broncos are one of my Top 25 Programs because they do have a good winning percentage, they have a blue field and they have proven themselves over the years. They aren't scared to schedule tough teams-- they beat Georgia in Atlanta to open the season last year. The Broncos can prove themselves once again by beating Michigan State on the road to open up the season this year. Chris Petersen has certainly done an excellent job at Boise State, and it is going to be very interesting to see how well he does with his Broncos in this rebuilding year.

Boise State 2012 Schedule with predictions

@Michigan State L

Miami (OH) W

Brigham Young W

@New Mexico W

@Southern Miss L

Fresno State W

UNLV W

@Wyoming W

San Diego State L

@Hawaii W

Colorado State W

@Nevada L

My Regular Season Presiction: 8-4

Check back tomorrow to see what #100 (#6 Miscellaneous) is on College Football 101.

The Countdown begins... Only 101 days until college football! Hang in there!

I understand why, as the anti-ESPN Classic, WolverineHistorian doesn't do Michigan losses. But sometimes the difference between winning and losing is so small that I feel like it's almost inconsequential when judging the overall greatness of a game. I can promise you that's not how I felt on January 1, 2005 (or January 1, 2000). I'm not sure if it's just the passing of time or what Vince Young did to the college football world the next season or both, but I definitely feel now that this is a great Michigan football game.

This was the first time the Rose Bowl was in HD. Does anyone know if there were other Michigan games that year in HD? If not, this would be the first HD Michigan game too. Quarters 2-4 are untouched streams from a blu-ray rip. I had to re-encode the pregame/1st quarter to get it in under YouTube's 2GB limit. OK yeah tl;dr, commence seeking for shots of GERG.

[please tell me if you think that these stats need to be manipulated better. I’m still working on the ideas behind these concepts, and any ideas are welcome. This is meant to be a look to his likely stats next year through stats and deduction. I will continue to try and do this with other players and units as the off-season starts. Any ideas for further analysis helps.]

Denard Robinson:

RUNNING GAME:

He’s already set the record for most rushing yards in a season, on a 6.8 yards/attempt average. Let’s admit that he’s most likely not going to do that again, although I’d bet his average will stay around the same. Because he’s a more athletic version of Pat White, I’ll use those stats to try and show what I think Denard will do on the ground.

Pat White had 197 attempts for 1335 yards at 6.8 YPC his junior year. I would imagine that Denard would have about the same stats. So, we’ll get a drop in yardage by about 100 yards, but this will be made up by his throwing stats I’d assume.

Other things to note:

Denard still does not scramble very often. Vince Young, Pat White, and others did this much more and were able to get a lot of yards of scrambles. As Denard gets another year under his belt, I’d expect much more scrambling and bigger gains. This will, of course, help open the passing lanes.

Denard runs the iso and zone read a lot. I don’t know how many times White ran it, or V. Young, but I think Denard has many more designed runs than any other QB has had. This will most likely get cut down because of his injuries this year, Dee Hart coming in, and his passing game getting better. With that being said, on to the…

PASSING GAME:

(I wanted to take passing stats from players who are like Denard. I believe these are the closest guys to him.)

THE LONG BALL:

As most of us know, Denard doesn't throw the long ball as well as we'd like him to. He does not use much touch yet, and this is something that we can expect growth on in the off-season. He throws the short passes decently, but without the deep ball threat he's still not 100% effective. There have been great throws, but they are too few. The long ball will be one development, but along with throwing the ball deep, we get a much higher chance of INTs. Based on this, I wanted to try and predict Denard's INT totals for next year from other prolific running QBs. Below are the stats and their significance.

Int thrown/100 passes by year in the league:

Player

Freshman

Soph

Junior

Senior

Vince Young

N/A

4

3

N/A

Troy Smith

2.5

1.6

1.9

N/A

J. Russell

N/A

2.7

2.9

2.3

D. Dixon

N/A

2.8

4.3

1.5

C. Newton

N/A

N/A

3

N/A

P. White

4.3

3.8

1.8

2.5

Denard is at 4.3 INT/100 attempts

If you look at the stats you’ll see that Denard’s average is about where V. Young was in his sophomore year. Young then made an impressive downswing of one less interception thrown every 100 passes. However, when you look at the total averages there isn’t much of a jump from sophomore to junior year.
Dixon’s stats are the ones which screw this up, so if you throw out that outlier you do get a decent jump in INT/100 passes.

WHAT THIS MEANS:
Assuming Dixon’s stats are a outlier, we can expect Denard to throw about 1 less interception per 100 attempts. He’s going to have about 250 attempts this season so that’s 2.5 less interceptions next year. Assuming he throws 300 passes, that’s 9 interceptions next year. (Vince Young had 10 the season he won his Heisman.)

SUMMARY:

Denard should have around 1400 rushing yards at about 7 YPC. I believe he will have less designed runs, but more sneaks. He will also throw about 9 INTs next year, when I believe he'll have just shy of 300 attempts.